Posted
by
Zonk
on Friday July 08, 2005 @03:54PM
from the doom-3-suqs dept.

The Next Generation site has an editorial up by veteran animator Steve Bowler discussing the loss of prestige id has suffered, at least in his eyes, as a result of the latest incarnation of Doom. From the article: "But one day, the industry changed. The consumer changed. It's hard to put one's finger on it. Maybe it was Counter-Strike. Maybe Unreal Tournament. Something happened to the genre between Quake III and Doom 3, and Id somehow didn't take it into account. Call it braggadocio, or hubris, but Doom 3 is no longer the top dog in the FPS market. Yes, it's upsetting. I tried not to admit it either. But it's undeniably true."

I never realized it was ever top dog. It came out, I played it, then it went on the shelf. It wasn't really that impressive and it certainly wasn't good enough to be called top dog. My kids watched me play it for about a half hour and that was enough for them. They never felt the desire to play it. Yeah it was pretty and it had some nice eye candy, but what's that got to do with the value and quality of a game? If you don't have the desire to play it more than once then it can't even be considered top-10.

The problem with id, and even valve, is that they take way to freaking long to come out with their next game, and then what is it? Its a sequel to an eixsting game.

While I am not knocking their capabilities of offering state-of-the-art 3D gaming engines, do we really NEED a Quake 4?

While games like HL2 definitly has improved the gameplay over the original HL, by the time you get to the 3rd or 4th iteration of the same concept, how original is it?

I think id should stick to making game engines, and let other, more creative companies designe the game content, and STOP making sequels in general. Develop some new story ideas, and heck, some new gameplay features instead of just offering an new improve clone of the same ol' game

Also, don't hype about a game 4 years before releasing it, then push back the game release for another 8 - 12 months. The game doesn't have to be perfect, just playable. It makes more sence to get a large audience of players running the game, and finding bugs, then fixing them quickly, rather then waiting while a smaller team of people Q/A the product and take years to clear all of the bugs

While I am not knocking their capabilities of offering state-of-the-art 3D gaming engines, do we really NEED a Quake 4?...I think id should stick to making game engines, and let other, more creative companies designe the game content

Interestingly enough, that's what id is doing with Quake 4. The game design responsibilities are being handled by Raven Software, the guys who did Jedi Knight 2 and Elite Force.

I think what the article was getting at is that Doom 3 wasn't really a sequel in a lot of ways. It wasn't a prettier and improved version of Doom and Doom II. It was a poorly designed game with impressive graphics.

If it was a true Doom clone, it'd have the same sense of chaos and the rooms full of big swarms of enemies for you to fight. Not one on one battles in a dark corridor. He mentioned the 'Run and Gun' style of play. That's what iD did well, and what they didn't try to do in Doom 3.

He should go play a game from the Serious Sam series. Lots of bad guys, lots of fast paced and constant shooting. It's too bad their engine was mostly overlooked. It's done those huge environments for a long time, and there's lots of fun co-op games going all the time. Wheee!

All good points, but then why CALL it DOOM3, or QUAKE 4, why even commission another company to develop another game in the series?
Let other companies have a run with their game engine, and develop some fresh new titles, a new franchise they can milk for a few years, rather then offering high quality clones of exsiting games.
ID isn't being seen as an innovator which is why they are losing their luster.
I think most companies try to bank off the success of previous games, but fail to realize that what t

Because brand names sell.
Franchises like Doom, Quake, and Half-Life rely on the reputation of the original to market the product. Both id and Valve are one-trick ponies, and I'm saying this as a fan of both developers. In my opinion, Half-Life was the best game evar, because it was both style and substance.
But the reason we have Doom 3, Half-Life 2, and Quake 4 is for the same reason we have seven Nightmare on Elm Street films, ten Friday the Thirteenth films, and god knows how many Batman movies. Nam

It's not being done by id. Quake 4 it primarily being done by Raven, with id mostly providing the engine (doom 3). I'd say that Raven probably qualify as one of those more creative companies you mentioned.
-ReK

Demoing it for what? So Carmack can show everyone how leet he is? Quote article:

It used to be all about selling the engine, and now even that seems fated to despair as the Unreal 3 engine is winning awards and accolades for its ease of use, and is dominating the press as far as who's using it for their next-gen titles.

Doom 3 is a tech demo for Carmack's engine just like most of his games are. Nothing's changed to make id's prestige go any higher or lower than it always has been

A $55USD technology demo marketed as a highly anticipated video game. The $15-20 you can buy it for today is closer to what it should have been sold for. Better - he should have skipped the game and just released it as a benchmarking tool for those wanting to focus on the engine.
I know I feel robbed.

"A $55USD technology demo marketed as a highly anticipated video game. The $15-20 you can buy it for today is closer to what it should have been sold for. Better - he should have skipped the game and just released it as a benchmarking tool for those wanting to focus on the engine.
I know I feel robbed."

I agree with you completely, but in the past IDs games have been mainly a way to showcase their engines. And the better the games sell, the better they can sell their engines.

One of the problems with the id's games (as games, not as engines) is that they seem entirely too focused on deathmatch style games. They also seem to have very little taste in weapon design (real or fantastic) as far as FPS games go.

All in all, they seem to have one game formula and they just keep reskinning it.

Exactly. The only thing that could be on record for changing though is their income, which has substantially increased over the years for the release of games and sale of licenses. idSoftware in my opinion will always be the top dog in the FPS market, just because no one can beat John Carmack's great engines... it just comes down to them asking for permission and borrowing ideas from them. I'm sure after Carmack's next and last game, there will be some other game out there with a greater engine, but you kno

"Borrowing ideas"? I disagree. Ideas are precisely what id are lacking -- they have aesthetic finesse, but their games are as simple as games were years ago, without any of the more clever elements of plot and gameplay that people have been creating over that time. id's games focus on the engine, which ends up being great, but the game that gets tacked on the side often little more than a tech demo. Other producers licence the engine, because it saves them having to write an excellent engine, and allows the

Doom 3 was a great game, imo, however people's complaints about the whole flashlight mechanism were justified, and I can see how it would detract from the entertainment value. Id's goal was to make a scary game, and if you played the game with the swapped-in flashlight as they intended, it was indeed scary. The lighting was better than in any game I'd played at that point and created an unparalleled atmosphere of creepiness.

That being said, the idea that in "the mysterious future" you wouldn't be able to hold both a flashlight and a gun hurt the game's credibility. And going for the cheap scare so many times did tend to get old.

They were also determined to make D3 a single-player game in a field now dominated by multiplayer and massively-multiplayer games. I would have thought that they'd have realized this better than anyone, given that they practically created the market for multiplayer FPS gaming, but they chose to make Doom 3 a single player game, and between that and the whole flashlight deal, many people decided the game was a dud, and thus its fate was sealed.

I believe the best solution would have fallen between the "duct-tape" mod and the real release. I can see, with the leagons of doom coming toward you, you might forget to look for duct tape. However, if you could pull out the flash light for use with the one handed weapons, and maybe a couple of the two handed weapons but make the accuracy suck would have been a great comprimise.

Doom 3 was a great game, imo, however people's complaints about the whole flashlight mechanism were justified, and I can see how it would detract from the entertainment value. Id's goal was to make a scary game, and if you played the game with the swapped-in flashlight as they intended, it was indeed scary. The lighting was better than in any game I'd played at that point and created an unparalleled atmosphere of creepiness.

My problem is that if you played the game the way id intended the scenarios beca

Of course all the demons teleporting in from hell *don't* hurt the game's credibility, right?

People need to remember that no matter how photorealistic the graphics get, these are still GAMES. Do people ask why when Mario picks up a mushroom, he gets taller? No, because it's accepted as simply a gameplay element because Mario is not a life simulator. Neither are FPS games. The flashlight weapon switching is an essential gameplay element, IMO. It causes tension and makes the gameplay more frantic.

Of course all the demons teleporting in from hell *don't* hurt the game's credibility, right?

No it doesn't, because that doesn't break the suspension of disbelief. Players know there are going to be demons from hell because that's a very central part to the premise of the series.

It does certainly hurt the games credibility when they don't teleport in, but instead just POP in to view with no manner of accompanying animation (due to crap design and implementation), often right in front of you, because that

It worked for a while, but in the end you got their formula. There were two main scares:

Room goes dark

Enemy spawns behind you

That was basically the whole of Doom 3's range of "scary". I mean, it was, but it was cheap horror flick scary, not really psychologically scary (although the journal entry things were ok in a "I wish we'd developed System Shock 2, that game was awesome" sort of way).

The FPS market dried up in about 2000,well atleast in inovation (perhaps 99).Doom 3 was fun and so was Half life 2 , but neither compared to their previous incarnations , they were better only due to the fact they were released several years after the origionals.ID no longer has the crown as there is no real crown to have.

Oh please. Halo is one of the best examples for the lack of creativity in FPS games. The only people who actually enjoyed Halo were those who never played FPSs before on the PC (mainly because they were too young before), and thought what they were playing was innovative because it didn't suck quite as bad as previous console FPSs.

The fact that it is basically the only game worth buying on a console you bought doesn't change the games worth for anyone but you and others who bought the console. It's actually a common phenonenon for people who buy failed consoles. They tend to latch on to the one or two games worthwhile for the system with a religous sort of fevor in some hope that others will see the light or at the very least make them feel less like idiots for buying a console no one else wanted.

I'm still amazed not only by how many people think the Xbox 360 will do well, but how many people plan on buying one. I really don't get it.

The X-Box so far had 1 major game - Halo. It also had some nice PC ports (I think) like Max Payne.

The X-Box 360 seems doomed to repeat the same, because they are throwing away their game library to start over again, with a totally different archetecture. So, we'll have... what at launch? And will we again have to wait 2-3 years for anything approaching a library to c

Halo 2 is a damn fine implementation of the classic FPS, but is rather short on innovation. Everything is well implemented - weapons, aliens, vehicles, the climactic ending (well, three out of four ain't bad).

All is not lost for id. This just means that the competition has caught up to and surpassed the ones who'd set the bar for so many years. Now it's time to bring something new to the table. In the end it's all good for gamers. One place to start might be to start focusing more on consoles since like it or not that's where the great mass of the market is going. There must be something to this Halo thing. I still prefer mouse and keyboard, but kids today, well you get the picture... Anyway, the console would be a good place to bring something new to the FPS genre that people would sit up and notice via a new peripheral like the eye toy or something else. Pushing more and more polygons or turning out the lights is not the answer.

maybe people have started taking an extreme liking to more life-like* FPS. factors like recoil, spray, real-world guns...

i have no preference in this coz either type can be as entertaining. for multi-player, it depends entirely on the kind of ppl u play with**. interesting story lines help (though not for repetitive gameplay).

* i don't mean ppl actually going around killing each other...like they do in real life.** (for the really anal)...the kind of ppl with whom u play.

Quake III was prettier but nowhere near as responsive. It was good, but not the same, and not better really despite the major engine overhaul and drastic change in focus. Pretty much all just stand alone arenas. Yes, I know that was the point, but for me this is where they started to miss the point.

Doom III took everything they did wrong with Quake III and then some and forced it onto a single player game. It was c

Quake III was all stand-alone areas because they had to mishmash what the art and level design folks were doing into a coherent game. Id was going through a rough patch during Quake III, Romero fucked off and Carmack had no vision of how the game should look or play, therefore there was no leadership on the project, so no story, and no fluidity. All the levels were stand alone not by design, but really by chance and failure to manage the project properly.

"it ran on more modest computers."
This is exactly what I was thinking about when the parent said that Quake II was more responsive. Quake II's multiplayer runs on a 10Hz clock. There's no way in hell that this would feel better than Quake III's game world. Unless, of course, your hardware wasn't up to snuff to actually play Quake III. Which, when Quake III was new, was entirely possible. If your machine was pretty up to date at the time then Quake III was much better in the responsiveness department, there

From TFA:"...and the upcoming Unreal Tournament 3"So if he is talking about Unreal Tournament 2007, that would be Unreal Tournament 4 in the numbering scheme of how many Unreal Tournaments there have been. 1 would be Unreal Tournament (1999) 2 is Unreal Tournament 2003, 3 is Unreal Tournament 2004. Finally 4 is Unreal Tournament 2007.

Steve Bowler is certainly entitled to voice his opinion on whatever forum he likes; but I know I enjoyed Doom 3 and the expansion pack. If he didn't, well, too bad. The game isn't going to appeal to the kid who plays counter-strike solely (not that CS and CS:S are bad, they just aren't the only type of game), and it isn't going to appeal to the most jaded gamers. Monster closets are obviously a problem with Doom 3, but that is about it. It does something modern new games like Battlefield 2, and all of the Unreal Tournaments don't do; deliver a single player experience with a good modern engine. BF2 has bots, and UT2004 has better bots, but they don't have any kind of good linear single player experience. Far Cry might, I haven't played it beyond the demo. HL2 certainly does deliver on that. Show me another modern engine that runs on your computer and delivers a reasonably good single player FPS experience right now, I'd certainly point to HL2 and Doom 3.

"...and the upcoming Unreal Tournament 3"
So if he is talking about Unreal Tournament 2007, that would be Unreal Tournament 4 in the numbering scheme of how many Unreal Tournaments there have been. 1 would be Unreal Tournament (1999) 2 is Unreal Tournament 2003, 3 is Unreal Tournament 2004. Finally 4 is Unreal Tournament 2007.

I suspect he meant the upcoming Unreal Engine 3. Unreal and UT99 used the Unreal Engine 1. UT2k3 and UT2k4 both used the same basic Unreal Engine 2. UT2k7 will be based on the

While this may be implied, it sure isn't clear that this was his intention. It was also irrelevent to the discussion at hand, which is Doom 3. Doom 3 is a single player game. It is like comparing Katamary Damacy to Algebra Blaster.

IMHO the problem with Doom3 is the engine. The graphics where ok, but if all it can render are five foot long corridors its just isn't much impressive in the long run. In UT, Farcry, Battlefield and a bunch of other games you have huge outdoor scenarios, in Doom3 you don't have any of that, even so it would have fit the scenario quite well. Beside from that the graphics also where not that impressive, they were good, but not really much better then other games that released around the same time. Doom3 ended up being one of many games out there, neither the graphics nor the gameplay set it much apart from the rest.

The problem is simply that basically all games today look great, full 3d, shaders, bloom and stuff, so it gets a lot harder then in the old days to look special.

I doubt it, the processing power eating stuff in Doom is mostly just shaders, shadows and the like, each of which can simply be switched of when porting to XBox (flashlight doesn't create shadows in the XBox version as far as I know). Outdoor wouldn't be much different, the XBox is well capable of handling huge outdoor scenarios, just not with all the bells and whistles like a PC with a good graphics card. So it would be again just a matter of switching some stuff off when porting Doom.

It isn't a bad engine... it's just too specialized.The only reason the Source engine and the Unreal engine don't have 100% dynamic lighting and shadows is that it severely limits the scope of the environment and other graphics features.

The Doom3 engine traded many of the abilities of current generation engines for one next generation feature.

I left id Software in early 2000 about six months after Quake3 came out. Counterstrike was starting to really catch on and I personally don't enjoy "realistic" weapon based first person games. I really like playing with completely unrealistic rocket launchers, laser guns, etc. Counterstrike never appealed to me as there's only so many variations on hit scan weapons (such as glocks, rifles, etc). With Quake3 done, the next game was Castle Wolfenstein with the Quake3 engine. The entire industry was headed for war simulation games, mostly fueled on the popularity of Counterstrike. I didn't want to work on these games--they weren't something I was interested in. I like an arcade game like feel to the game, not a slow tactical game. I'm not saying these were bad games, just not the type of games I enjoy playing or making.

id excelled at making amazing technology and simple addictive arcade like gameplay with that technology. The original DOOM is an arcade game--its incredibly fast with dozens of monsters on the screen. Quake and its sequels were also arcade games, except you can play over the internet against other people.

Doom3 wasn't an arcade game. id attemped something different by building a game that followed a story and because of limitations of the engine, could only allow interaction with a few creatures at once. They tired to do this with some the mechanics from the older single player games (such as monster closets) and while the game is both incredible from a visual and technological standpoint, the gameplay to match this just isn't there. Much of what Steve says is right, when the level of graphics and presentation presented called for realism, old models of spawning monsters behind you when you pick up something doesn't work anymore. That worked in an arcade game, but not in a story driven game focusing on realism.

I hope id realizes their strengths and return to focusing on games with great visuals and technology with simple and addictive arcade like gameplay. That's the id I know and want to play.

I agree 100% with everything you said. I have always made the point that I would rather a game be fun than realistic. I played Counterstrike for only a few days before I tired of the sneeking/creeping slow gameplay.

Thanks for all the stuff you have done for us that like the truely fun type of games!

In the original Doom game, I enjoyed the complex level design and automap feature, combined with lots of secret areas and lots of monsters to battle at once. I just don't much enjoy battling one or two monsters at a time, and I'm bored by the linear architecture of modern fps games.

For single player gaming, I like the complex architecture, automapping, and multiple monster battles in modern 3rd-party remakes of the original Doom game (jdoom [doomsdayhq.com]) .

old models of spawning monsters behind you when you pick up something doesn't work anymore. That worked in an arcade game, but not in a story driven game focusing on realism

I disagree. There are multiple points where that happens in Unreal (the old original one).

Probably the most memorable one is the Stone Titan battle. You see him on his throne, but he doesn't move. You can walk up to him, walk on him, shoot him, make noise, fight the other enemies in the area, whatever. But the moment you steal his treasure, he's gonna try to whoop your ass! It was CLASSIC pick-up-the-item-and-get-ambushed. And it was good.

Why was it good? Because they did it right. They didn't make enemies suddenly appear all around you. They had an enemy that was inactive become active when you stole his stuff. It's something that would be believable in real life (if real life included crash-landing on a planet full of reptile warriors and being the one and only human to whoop ass and live through the ordeal).

This illustrates the difference between "arcade" gamers (as you claim to be), and "realism" gamers (which I seem to share more traits with).

"Arcade" gamers play games for the sake of games. They understand how games work, and therefore, couldn't care less how the enemies got there. They already know how the enemies got there. They understand that The Game deposits enemies into the playing field when it's supposed to, and it's your "job" to kill them.

"Realism" gamers play games to be immersed in a world. They may or may not know how games work, and their pickiness about just how real a game has to be varies from player to player. They see enemies dropping in as a story element rather than a command to blast things to smithereens. They want enemies that appear to be accompanied by dropships or the sparky fizzle of a transporter beam or at least fall through holes in the roof (Unreal did this a lot). But the enemies have to come from somewhere. They can't just randomly appear. (There are exceptions - like random battles in Final Fantasy games, which happen in areas where your zoomed-out view wouldn't allow you to see the enemies anyway.)

I hate to admit it, but I've actually bought a few id games. Quake 3, which people swore was better than Unreal Tournament (damn liars...), Return to Castle Wolfenstein (good, but somehow felt too stiff), and... well... no, that's it. I guess I really don't care if id makes a comeback, and perhaps you can see why. I don't begrudge anyone their favorites, though, so good luck to them and you.

You nailed it exactly on the head, but let me add my own two cents in.

The problem with Doom 3 is two fold. First of all, the engine is nowhere near as flexiable as the other two alternatives out there, namely Source and the upcoming Unreal Engine 3. Pitiful outdoor, and quite honestly every single game made on the Doom 3 engine looks the same. A lot less flexable then Carmacks Quake 3 engine.

Second of all, iD can honestly not make single player games with story to save their lives. Their first thre

Much of what Steve says is right, when the level of graphics and presentation presented called for realism, old models of spawning monsters behind you when you pick up something doesn't work anymore. That worked in an arcade game, but not in a story driven game focusing on realism.

Seems to me like this is kind of a paradox, complaing about monsters coming up behind you as being not realistic.

I dunno, if I was a monster, I wouldn't just dance around in front of you until you decided to shoot me...

Both of the 'flagship' games out - Half Life 2 and Doom 3 - had a couple things in common. Both had absolutely stunning graphics and the potential to interact with the environment. Both games were about as linear as a ride at Disney land... Both wanting stupid ($60ish) amounts of cash.

At first, Doom was a bit scary - but there were just not that many different monsters about. Did not take long for things to get old. Even worse - the step forward, closet open behind you, and random monster jump out at y

Doom 3 was looking good, as was Halo 2. Then I saw the physics demo for Half-Life 2, and promptly stopped paying attention to anything else.

Computer (more specifically, GPU) processing power has increased so much in the past few years that game companies can no longer simply rely on "Uber-realistic graphics!!!" to sell their games. Everyone can do that now. It's old news.

That was id's mistake. I think that Valve properly recognized the "Uber-Graphics" wall in the industry and instead focused on game physics and AI. The result was Half-Life 2, and one of the first (if not the first) FPS games that you could really interact with any aspect of the environment, beyond scripted "push this crate here to open the door" elements. Don't get me wrong, Doom 3 is pretty. But gamers are bored of "just pretty graphics". Doom 3 didn't bring anything new to the party; Half-Life 2 did.

Doom 3 was looking good, as was Halo 2. Then I saw the physics demo for Half-Life 2, and promptly stopped paying attention to anything else.

This is kind of funny, seeing as how Halo 2 uses the exact same middleware physics library that HL2 does. As do quite a few other games (Psi-ops comes to mind especially, since it did its own version of a gravity gun well before HL2 was released - did it better IMO, too).

I know that isn't really your main point or anything, I just find it really interesting that Valv

I liked Doom 3 actually. Of course it did not have the brains and braun of a Half-Life or mulitplayer of Halo 2, but I really dug the game. I own it on the Xbox and I enjoy playing it in casual spurts. Maybe its just me, but I like shooting games every once in a while to NOT require solving puzzles or having some fleshed out story. When I just want to shoot stuff, that is where Doom 3 fits the bill.

I love the online co-op via Xbox Live and even the so so deathmatch is good once in a while. What makes the g

I've bought every single ID game since Doom (which I got direct from Id way back when, probably one of the few Italian orders they ever received, I'm sure) but I decided to skip Doom3, it took me only an hour or so looking at it over the shoulder of a friend to decide that yes, the engine was cool but the gameplay just wasn't there.

Monster spawning behind you are not believable anymore, as it's not believable to have the whole game in the dark, as it's not believable to have every room look pretty much exa

FTA:
"Who knew demons were capable of such stealth and chicanery?"I did. I don't think the author has much experience with real demons. Wouldn't one expect a little stealth and chicanery from an extra-dimensional being? I mean, the fangs and claws are just the parts of it that happen to land in the easily-perceptible parts of the EM spectrum. Demons fuck with you. It's what they are. Extradimensional beings that fuck with us.

I wonder what could cause a person to suddenly flip out for no reason and kill a

Reading the summary and seeing a comment like "Maybe it was Counter-Strike. Maybe Unreal Tournament. Something happened to the genre between Quake III and Doom 3, and Id somehow didn't take it into account" made my eyes glaze over and almost started moving to the next article. I got sick of defending Doom 3 from people who didn't "get it" before the game had even come out.

First of all, the comment above is ridiculous - saying Doom 3 is anything like Quake 3, CS, or UT is just an inherently flawed statement. The only thing they have in common is that they're first person shooters. Doom 3 is clearly exclusively a single player game, and ALL those other games are (for all intents and purposes) multiplayer games.

The rest of the article was just about the fact that he got bored fighting zombies. Zoid pointed out the same thing in his comment. Sure, I can see that. But Doom 3 was always a horror game. Everything id said on the way to release was that it was a horror game. It was about being scared. I don't really have much sympathy for those that bought it expecting anything else, just like I have no sympathy for every other gamer that buys a game without excercising any critical judgement about it (ie, the majority) - Battlefield 2 is another example of this, a horribly busted game that people have bought by the hundreds of thousands.

Anyway, these articles are everywhere and (imo) they're always the same - they're all people complaining because they didn't appreciate the game for what it was - a pure horror game. I played the whole thing with the lights out in a small room with surround sound set up (fortunately my sister had just moved out so I was able to steal her room and use it exclusively for a Doom room the entire game). I spent the whole time jumping out of my chair. Sure, I've killed enough zombies in my time as well, but it was about BEING SCARED.

Everything id said on the way to release was that it was a horror game. It was about being scared

I think you should reread the article: doom 3 didn't deliver at all on the scary part: how exactly is it scary to know that any time you open a door something materializes behind you? It might make you jump the first time, a bit the second, but after that it becomes just boring.

Compare this with the Ravenholm level in HL2, now that was scary, unexpected things happened all the time and the atmosphere was just

I think you should reread my post - it totally delivered on the scary part for me. Probably because I played it 'properly' - dark room, surround sound, nothing else in the room, hardest difficulty, not save/reload whoring.

I would argue that the vast majority of FPS players simply don't have the patience or energy (or interest in horror games) to play it like that.

Something happened to the genre between Quake III and Doom 310 years?ok, ok, I jest...Seriously though, I played Doom 3 when it first came out, I think the whole horror thing was a bit overrated. It wasn't scary, it was "gee, its getting quiet and dark and.... oh look... the door is being beaten down by an imp." or "oh look, I opened that door and something jumped out at me (same as the last 30 fucking times)".It got old really quick - something that didn't happen with Doom 1.On the other hand, I really

id's problem has always been that they were a one-trick pony...i.e., graphics. John Carmack took what was at the time a largely theoretical specification, (BSP) first built two genre-defining games out of it, (Doom and Doom 2) and then went on to display an increasing level of technical mastery with it by adding full three-dimensionality. (Quake) As far as pure graphics are concerned, the man is without peer...he occupies a place fairly close to Einstein in my own head. (And he's a Texan, no less!;-))

However, problems eventually arose from the fact that graphics alone are not what make a truly engaging FPS. It might have been the first engine to utilise OpenGL, but from a *gameplay* perspective Quake 2 especially was complete crap in my book. The situation got markedly worse with Quake 3 as well, from the point of view that the base engine was the only part of it which id actually produced themselves. Everything else (the AI, the cutscenes) had to be outsourced. Q3's credits list is very long...and id's own staff do not occupy a very large part of it.

Q1 was id's finest hour in my mind...I still don't think I've ever had a more immersive or atmospheric multiplayer experience since then. (and I've played my share of Q3 and UT 2003 online) I realise however that such is a completely subjective statement...but I've long tended to believe that the development of any technology follows a bell pattern, where it hits a peak of development/refinement, and then actually starts to come back down somewhat. (I don't include visual photo-realism as a criteria here either; quite the opposite, actually) For me, (purely in terms of multiplayer) the original Quake was the proverbial summit of the mountain.

The release of Unreal and Unreal Tournament certainly didn't help matters for id though, either...because not only were they beautiful graphically, (the original UT is still a completely acceptable visual experience in my book) but they also included all sorts of innovations where AI and gameplay were concerned...not to mention an extremely discoverable and user-friendly editor, which made it easy for any net-dwelling 14 year old to create their own scenarios as well. Epic might have been ardent worshippers of id, but they were probably more responsible for their idols' demise than any other single factor from what I saw.

So, yeah...that to me is the main issue. Carmack is/was a graphical genius...but they were only able to get away with graphics alone for maybe three releases. (Doom/2, Quake) These days, graphics alone aren't what sell a game...You need good level design, decent AI, and people generally like a strong storyline with a high immersion factor as well.

id were the first, and they will always have that distinction...but they were not able to reinvent themselves...and the world has moved on.

For me I started online gaming with quake 2. For me rocket arena 2 was a great competition game. I'm sure there are many more like me where this is what we want and ID might always be able to deliver that.

A game with a good weapon set, some decent built in maps and tools to spawn a huge modding community. A lot of us don't need complex ai, storyline, or any immersion. We just want to shoot each other.

I agree almost completely, but I think that your depiction is in fact slightly too generous. id indeed is responsible for some great innovation in game technology, but that's about as close to a good game as tcp is.

My personal favorite for actual game design has always been Bungie. I don't believe that id has, to this day, come out with a game that's the equal of Marathon.

I've found that once I get bored with gameplay and only want to see the story, I'm effectively done with the game and turn on God mode.

With Doom3, it took about an hour or two before God mode got selected. With Far Cry, it was at the point where you're breaking out into an open area with lots of monsters. I happily made it through HL2 with no cheats.

Also in Doom3 I debated even finishing it, I was losing interest so fast.